“GOD IS GREAT” – THE CRY OF TERROR

The scientific secularist makes us ask the question, “Why do you believe in God?” The religious terrorist makes us ask the question, “What sort of God do you believe in?” Both questions are crucial in the modern world, and we need an answer to both. In some ways the latter question is more important than the first, and it has been forced upon us yet again this week by indiscriminate bomb plots on aircraft in the name of God.

The suicide bomber blows himself up with the cry, “God is great”. The same cry enables a man to send his younger brother on a suicidal death mission, and, according to reports, the man responsible for the “cartridge bombs” discovered this week has perpetrated precisely that crime. Suicide and indiscriminate murder are part of the political outworking of religious “jihad” being fought in this world against the great Satan of the west. Martyrdom has been re-defined as killing one’s self in order to kill others, rather than being ready to die for one’s faith at the hands of militant persecutors.

Who is this “God” who is “great” in the midst of such terror? He is certainly a great help to the secularist cause! But the reality is that, despite the fact that the true God is indeed great, the application of that truth to such deeds is nothing more than a blasphemy against his greatness. It is a work of deception in the degenerate human mind. Unfortunately there are many such misrepresentations of God in the world, whereas in the nature of the case there is only one true God.

If one thing becomes immediately clear from all this, it is that the idea that all “faiths” or “beliefs” lead to the same God is manifest nonsense. We might safely say that humble, generous souls with a heart for righteousness and love might well find their way through the labyrinth of religious systems of the world to the one true God (cp. Cornelius). But religious systems more often block the way, or point in wrong directions.
The Judeo-Christian God of the bible rejects categorically both murder and suicide; Christianity as a religion has had its fanatics, but genuine Christianity has always rejected both murder and suicide even in its doctrine concerning war. It cannot be remotely construed as leading in the same direction as suicidal jihad, nor of coming from the same source.

Understanding who God is and what he is like is fundamental, therefore, to real and true faith. But only God himself can reveal his own nature, and the Old and New Testaments claim unequivocally to provide us with that revelation; they do not purport to be human philosophy but revelation. It is when we begin to piece this biblical revelation together and hold it alongside our own experience and living encounters with God that we begin to realise how utterly self authenticating this witness is, and that it is leading us to the truth.

The crucial encounter with God is in meeting the risen Jesus. He is the way, the truth and the life; he is the light of the world; he is the one who has revealed the “name” of God (that is to say, his nature), He has revealed it both in his person and in his teaching. Fundamentally, love totally predominates; judgement and righteousness provide an essential balance to love, are indeed an integral part of love; total provision is offered for every aspect of human need; eternal life is underlined heavily.

He sends us out to love our neighbours, to love our enemies, to do good to all people, and as far as lies within us to be at peace with all. This is self-authenticating truth!


Bob

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THE HEAVENS DECLARE …..

It is very difficult not to admire the courage of Professor Stephen Hawkins, the Cambridge astrophysicist. After wasting his prodigious intellectual talents in his ‘teens, he was stung in his early twenties into intense and diligent research into the universe by the onset of a progressive wasting illness. He has shown enormous character in the battle of life.

It is profoundly tragic, therefore, that, as yet, he has been unable to leap from the vast erudition of his studies into a grasp of the Creator God. One can only sincerely pray that he will do so. Like a supreme technician analysing exactly how a masterpiece was painted, but never standing back to see what the masterpiece is saying, so Professor Hawkins’ focus is on the "how" of creation, not the message of creation. But the “how” will never yield the “why” – that is a totally different perspective.

For Paul the Apostle the message of this masterpiece of creation was all too clear. He writes, “God has made it plain. Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made”. The words, “plain” and “clearly seen” stand out. It seems to me three things at least demand that we see God in creation; the incomprehensibility of time and space, the sheer unspeakable beauty of it all and the meticulous order of it all. It is a most extraordinary thing that we are actually consciously aware of time and space; we know that something must lie beyond it. That very awareness points to an eternal being.

David, the psalmist, spent many a night as a shepherd contemplating the stars (something of which our city life has deprived us). He, just as plainly as Paul, saw the message of the masterpiece he was surveying; “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Ps. 19). Clearly he was reading the majesty and the beauty of what he saw. He also may well have been frequently in awe of what he was seeing. Certainly he would have been in awe if he had known as much as we do about the distances and time involved in creation.
The heavens “spoke” to him; “Day after day they pour forth speech, night after night they display knowledge” – a constant reminder of our Creator. Not only the heavens spoke, but his own self as a created being spoke to him; “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139), not merely physically but mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

Secularism goes on battering at us and has plenty of sympathetic scope in the media, certainly more than the Christian viewpoint. Thank God, however, he has left us a witness that can never be totally obscured. The very creation, as Paul reminds us, leaves us “without excuse”. May God open the eyes of many to the obvious.



Bob

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WISDOM FROM THE CHILEAN MINE

“Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” Ps. 90:12

An awful lot of “wisdom” came out of the mine with the rescued trapped miners in Chile. All of them were in a situation where every moment was forcing them to “number their days”, or as we might put it “recognise that their days were numbered”. Face to face with life or death there was no alternative but to take stock of life, and many “applied themselves to wisdom” (where “wisdom” in this context refers to God and his ways).

One of the miners, the grandfather miner (63), simply said on his return to the surface, “Sometimes you need something to happen in your life to really reflect and understand that we only have one life. I am a different person”. His first intent was to give his wife of thirty years standing what she had always wanted – a wedding dress and a marriage in church. He had changed – he had a new and deeper respect for life, for his loved ones and for God.

He was not the only one who felt a deeper soberness about life. Another miner was impressed in a very similar manner and on his return knelt down, crossed himself and then told his girlfriend of twenty five years “we’ll buy you a wedding dress and get married in church”. Yet another miner received a marriage proposal from his girl friend with whom he has daughters and they will get married straight away. Such painfully gained sobriety is all to the good. It is “wisdom”. It is learning the real measure of life. It contrasts vividly with the comments of the editor of the Times who in his editorial comment seems to have felt obliged (as the media generally is) to include only a somewhat sordid sexual reference to another miner’s wife.

Interestingly in the background to the Chilean story we hear of Jose Henriquez who was the drill master and became the spiritual leader of the trapped group; he led prayers and boosted spirits. We hear also that among the “liberty kit” sent down to the trapped men was a T-shirt with the slogan “Thank you Lord, because nothing is impossible with God”. These were sent down by the “Jesus Film Project”, along with a copy of the film of the Life of Jesus for the men to watch. The second miner out, wearing his Jesus T-shirt said, “I never doubted I would get out alive. God and the Devil fought for me, and God decided to save me”. He also said he had “buried 40 years of my life in the cavern”, which one hopes was a remark indicating a new kind of wiser life.

Catastrophe, therefore, does not always end in disaster and death. It can create a focus we too often lack. It can end in powerful and positive amendment of life. When we look at impending catastrophes on a wider scale, in national affairs and in the economy in particular, we can only pray that for a great many people some wisdom, sobriety and renewal will emerge even from them. That is God’s intent and desire.

Bob

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